It's been over a decade since Miley Cyrus told the world that she can't be tamed, and she continues to live by it. After leaving her bubblegum teen pop days in the dust, she went on to try her hand at everything from hip hop to psychedelic pop to country with a tangible level of sincerity and the ability needed to pull most of it off. There's been criticism of the privilege that's allowed Miley to go in and out of these genres as she pleases, while Black artists who do similar things remain pigeonholed as "hip hop" or "urban," and that's a very valid criticism of the music industry as a whole, though it feels like Miley is genuine in her appreciation of the music, and not in a cynical music biz kind of way. Like tons of twentysomething millennials in the "I listen to everything" era, she seems to be following her musical heart wherever it takes her. Unlike most, she's been doing it -- for half her life -- with the whole world watching.
Miley's latest frontier is '70s/'80s rock, and her new album Plastic Hearts is basically a love letter to the music of (and adjacent to) that era. The album's first single was "Midnight Sky," an undeniable song that pays obvious homage to Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen," and it was followed a few months later with "Edge of Midnight," a mashup/remix of "Midnight Sky" and "Edge of Seventeen" that features Stevie herself contributing new vocals. That appears as a bonus track on Plastic Hearts alongside covers of Blondie's "Heart of Glass" and The Cranberries' "Zombie," both of which Miley recently covered at livestreamed festivals and both of which fit perfectly into the world of music on Plastic Hearts. (Unfortunately not included is her recent Velvet Underground cover.) Rock/punk icons Billy Idol and Joan Jett appear on the proper album, as do several other nods to iconic songs from rock history. The title track calls back to The Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," "Angels Like You" hints at The Beatles' "In My Life," and the guitar solo on "WTF Do I Know" doesn't not sound like Queens of the Stone Age's "Little Sister." Plastic Hearts feels like the pop album equivalent of covering your notebook in band stickers, and it works because Miley makes it her own even when the callbacks to other people's songs are overwhelmingly obvious.